


The Power the Dark Lord Knows Not

by Newtavore



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Emotional Hurt, Eridan Needs a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-19 19:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2399816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newtavore/pseuds/Newtavore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You would say that you don’t know why you’re here, but you’d be lying. </p><p>You know exactly why you’re here. You know exactly why you’re here, and the stupid fucking reason is that stupid fucking Eridan Ampora has gotten himself into some stupid fucking shit yet again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Power the Dark Lord Knows Not

You would say that you don’t know why you’re here, but you’d be lying. 

 

 

You know exactly why you’re here. You know exactly why you’re here, and the stupid fucking reason is that stupid fucking Eridan Ampora has gotten himself into some stupid fucking shit _yet again_. 

 

You wish you didn’t care so much, that you could just leave him to his consorts and wash your hands of every last _stupid fucking genocidal maniac inch of him_ , but you can’t. You can’t do it, you know, you’ve tried. You’ve tried, but every time he’s come crawling to you for help, you can’t just stick to it. He’s just so fucking pitiful- pitifully annoying- that you can’t resist trying to help, even though he just crashes and burns again later. 

 

Which is why you’re here. 

 

You did promise Eridan you’d visit, and you had intended to make good on that promise far sooner than now, but shit happens and you’d just never made the time. LOWAA is creepy as fuck anyways, and you have to say, you weren’t really trying that hard to clear your schedule, but then Eridan had stopped responding to Trollian pings and you’d come up into some nice, convenient free time and you felt both guilty and worried enough not to put it off any longer. 

 

Because it wasn’t just you he’d stopped responding to. 

 

After asking around, Eridan… he hadn’t spoken to anyone in a long, long time. You were the only person he’d messaged in the past month or so, and even then, your chats were sporadic and uninformative. He seemed distracted in most of them, unable to focus, and then, suddenly, he just… stopped replying. 

 

That had been over a week and a half ago, and it’s been at least five days past his limit for willful, attention grabbing ignorance. 

 

So, now you’re in LOWAA, freaking the fuck out and asking yourself why you hate your own existence so much as to subject yourself to this because, as mentioned, LOWAA is _fucking creepy_. The only sounds are your own footsteps and your breathing; everything else is silent, even the angels wheeling overhead, casting overly detailed shadows on your stark black and white surroundings. 

 

There’s no noise. You feel deaf, squashed down, like the air is somehow heavier here, and even though your brush your fingertips along textured brick you only feel cool, frictionless steel. Nothing is right. 

 

You open your mouth to call out, but you can’t make yourself break the silence. It seems somehow wrong to do so, like… like something bad will happen if you do, so you seal your lips and go about searching for Eridan the old fashioned way, desperately trying to ignore your own mounting fear. 

 

When you push open a cathedral door, it doesn’t scrape against the ground. No marks are made by its passing, no sounds are made by rusted door hinges or heavy, steel-oak wood. Your shoes clatter against the stone and glass outside, but as soon as you step forward, into the building, nothing. The only way you can tell you haven’t gone deaf is the sound of your breath rasping in your throat, harsh and loud in the silence. 

 

You hate it here already, and you’ve only been here for a few minutes. You think. It feels like you’ve been here for ages, but your watch reads only six and a half minutes past your arrival time. Everything here is fucked up and you hate it. You feel even more guilty for leaving Eridan to his own devices, now, because even though he’s a complete dipshit…  no one deserves to be left alone in this hell. 

 

The first cathedral is small, and it takes only ten minutes and forty seconds to search through it. You’re obsessively checking your watch now, every minute or so, because time just stretches on and on and on here, and it’s weighing you down almost as much as the oppressive laconism. 

 

The next cathedral is also empty, and takes sixteen minutes and five seconds to search. The third, twenty two minutes and thirty eight seconds. 

 

The fourth is the largest by far, and different somehow. The stained glass is intact, for one, and when you step forward, your footsteps echo loudly in the large entrance room. Stairs spiral in every direction, and, in the middle of the exceedingly large building, there’s a fountain, run dry and cracked but still impossibly whole, with a large, foreboding statue of an angel in the middle, curled around itself with its hands folded, like it was once cradling something to its stone chest. 

 

It’s here, you get the feeling that you aren’t alone. You get chills running up and down your spine and a sense that something is wrong, that you need to run, hide, get away, but your feet are rooted to the floor and you can’t seem to move. You’re frozen in place by fear, and your heart’s beating so hard in your chest you think you can hear it thumping in the silence of the room. 

 

“…Eridan?” you whisper, and force yourself to turn around.

 

Of course, of course, he’s behind you, rising from the smooth surface of the floor like a nightmare given shape, form bleeding together from shadow, and his very appearance makes you tremble. He’s black as pitch and pale as the sun, not a trace of color on him except the pale lavender where his irises should be, hardly standing out in the sea of white.

 

Emerging from his back and splattered with violet are two heavy, broad wings, the exact size and shape of the angels’. 

 

“What have you done?”

 

The words come out of your mouth before you can draw them back, and your knees give way, sending you to the floor. He’s so much taller than you, you’ve never noticed that before, never noticed how thin and tall and skeleton-like he was, but now it’s all you can see, his prominent bones and long, curving fingers like claws, his sunken eyes, his arched, jutting spine, everything about him to extremes and utterly wrong. 

 

“What have you done?” he mimics, mouth moving but your voice coming out, flashing teeth white and bone and sharp as knives, teeth made for killing, “What have you done? _What have you done_?”

 

He glides forward, a step at a time, soundless. You don't think his feet are touching the floor.

 

“I did what I had to.”

 

He spreads his arms and his wings, and seems to fill up the entire chamber. Shadows dance under his feet, roiling like boiling water, and you scramble away, until your back hits the fountain ring and you can go no further. 

 

“What- what the fuck happened to you? What is wrong with you?”

 

“Nothin’ is wrong with me!” he spits, clenching his fists, and in stark monochrome, his rage is even more terrifying than it ever could have been in color, “I am… the angels… they…”

 

He disappears, and you whirl around, searching madly for him before he can get the drop on you, because goddammit Eridan has jumped into the deep end of the pool without a fucking floaty and the fucker obviously _does not know how to swim_. 

 

“The angels care about me, Kar, more than you or anyone else ever did.”

 

He’s reappeared in the statue’s arms, hidden in the shadow of the stone idol, and from this angle he looks trapped, clenched in its fists. 

 

“I told you this place is bad for you,” he murmurs, voice carrying farther than it ever should have, echoing over and over until it sounds like it’s coming from all directions, surrounding you, “I told you, Kar, but you didn’t believe me. you didn’t come. I was trapped here, but the Angels came and told me the truth. The angels love me, they said so.”

 

You feel disoriented and sick to your stomach, filled to the brim with abject horror because Eridan was  _right_ , he was  _right_ ,  _what have you done._ You left him alone in this place, left him alone even though he told you, he told you how horrible it was here, but you didn’t believe him and  _what have you done_. 

 

He's curled in the angel's hands, snuggled up to it like he's being cradled in its arms, small and so desperately seeking love and acceptance that it hurts to look at him. The angels... he said the angels care about him and it's obvious that he thinks so, with the adoring gaze he casts up to the monstrous face of the statue and the way he lays in its grasp like he can pretend he's being held, and your chest hurts, aching with fear and terror and something that might be pity. 

 

He'd been left alone, left to his own devices, and you never could have guessed that this is what the result would have been. 

 

“Eridan-“

 

You voice gets stuck in your throat, and you choke out a pained noise, something that might have been a sob. You’re so scared you have tears in your eyes but you can’t leave him, not like this, not after you’d already abandoned him once before. 

 

“The angels fixed me, Kar,” he says, sweet as you please, tone soft and loving, “They made me better, an’ now it doesn’t hurt so bad, anymore.”

 

“This isn’t fixed,” you whisper, shaking your head, horrified, “This isn’t _fixed_ , Eridan-“

 

“Shut  _up_!” he shrieks, and the shadows around you claw at the ground angrily, gouging tile, “Shut up,  _shut up_! They  _told_  me! They  _told_  me you’d lie!”

 

He jumps from the statue's arms to the floor, wings flared and cape flowing behind him. It's times like this that you are reminded that Eridan is a predator, and a dangerous one at that; he looms over you, broad shouldered and narrow waisted, and though he's far too thin to be healthy you know he could do untold amounts of damage to your weaker body. His face is contorted into a snarl, baring sharp-edged teeth, and your heart tattoos a harsh beat against the inside of your chest because you know that in a feral state, he could and would rip out your throat with those teeth and not think a single thing about it. He's dangerous, but still, you ache with pity even as you are paralyzed by instinctual, animalistic fear.

 

“They love me, they care about me, they fixed me, they made me better,” he wails, voice cracking halfway through, “They told me so, they told me, they took everythin’ bad out and made me  _better_ -“

 

He levitates, glowing slightly, like this is some sort of cheap trolltergeist ripoff and you’re trying so hard not to scream but it’s incredibly hard because now there are voices coming from every direction, soft and hateful and bitter and terrifying, whispering things you can’t quite hear, surrounding you just like the shadows of wings and claws are surrounding him. 

 

“They told me the  _truth_ ,” he repeats, shaking his head, clutching his hair in his hands like pulling it out will make everything he says true, “They told me about your lies, about everythin’, and then they took me in an’ made me better, I’m better now, they fixed  _me_ -“

 

“They didn’t do anything but  _fuck you up_!” you scream, forcing yourself to your feet, “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking  _sorry_  I left you alone here Eridan but have you even spared one fucking thought to the fact that  _they_  might be the ones lying?”

 

He gnashes his teeth, and you see two small lines of color pierce the black and white, two trails of violet tears falling from his eyes. 

 

“No…” he says, soft and quiet, “No,  _no_ , they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t lie to me, you’re lying, you’re the liar, it’s you, it’s  _you_ -“

 

“It’s  _them_ ,” you snarl, throwing out your arms, gesturing to this entire nightmare realm, angels and all, “ _They’re_  lying, Eridan! They said they fixed you but all they did was turn you into a fucking  _monster_!”

 

You realize, perhaps a few seconds too late, that that might not have been the best choice of words on your part. Eridan, the thing that used to be Eridan, the thing that still is Eridan, gives a full body shudder and curls in on himself, face stained violet. 

 

“But… but you left me alone,” he murmurs, confused, almost childlike, "No one would talk to me, I was all alone, and then they- but they didn’t leave, they-“

 

“Eridan, there are no words on this earth that could ever express how truly fucking sorry I am,” you say, reaching out, “And I don’t have any right to demand forgiveness from you but please, at least, come back with me. Get away from here. Get away from them. They’ve twisted you up inside, turned you into something else, and you… you don’t even see it.”

 

He drops a few levels, then a few more, until he’s crumpled on the ground like a broken toy, arms wrapped tight around his chest and wings splayed awkwardly. 

 

“I… Kar, Kar I can’t think straight, I can’t-"

 

You know it’s a stupid idea, you know it's dumb to get within attacking range of those goddamn _teeth_ , but you stagger over to him anyways, falling to the ground beside him and pulling him close. 

 

“They’ve fucked up your head, you idiot, and it’s all my fault. I’m so fucking sorry I left you alone, so fucking sorry, but it’s not gonna happen anymore, okay? I’m not gonna leave you anymore, it’s gonna be okay.”

 

You keep whispering reassurances to him until he stops shaking, until the color starts to drip back into his frame, until the wings on his back start dropping feathers, and you know that it’s going to be a long, hard process, but you can bring him back from this. You can pull him back from the pit he’s dropped himself in, reverse the mindfuckery the angels caused, you can help him, _he’s not beyond help_. 

 

“I’m scared,” he whimpers, shaking his head, “I don’t- Kar, the angels, Kar I don’t want to leave-“

 

“The angels aren’t good for you,” you reply, holding him tighter, “Eridan, the angels fucked you up, they’ve been lying to you, they’re trying to poison you against us, though fuck if I know why.”

 

“So… so they don’t… they don’t love me.”

 

His face crumples, and he coughs out a strangled sob, clutching his head with both hands. 

 

“I thought they loved me, they told me they loved me…They told me they cared about me, Kar… “

 

He makes such desperate, broken little noises, nothing like the great heaving sobs and cries for attention you would have expected. He cries like he’s got no reason not to, no reason to keep himself together, just soft, almost silent tears, muted, hushed, just like the rest of this fucking place and it makes you angry and sick at the same time and you just want it to stop. 

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know they lied and I know it hurts but it’s gonna be okay, you’re not alone,” you say, clutching him to your chest like you can squeeze the darkness out of him, “I’m not gonna leave you alone anymore, you’ve got me, the angels lied but you have me, I swear.”

 

You don’t know how long you spend there with him- it could have been minutes, or hours, or days, with the way time moves in this fucking place- but as he cries, the taint of the angels bleeds from his form, like the release of emotion is shaking them free. All the color leeches back into his frame, every last splash of gaudy blue and purple and violet, and you have never been so glad to see his pretentious golden rings in all their glory, because it means that he’s _back_. He might not be alright, or even close to alright, but he’s back. 

 

“I’m taking you to LOPAH,” you say, helping him to his feet, and he stumbles, hunched forward, off balance, “You aren’t staying here any longer, no fucking way.”

 

He follows behind you silently, but you can hear his footsteps now. His feet are touching the floor, dragging over debris and broken glass, and though he's silent, you can hear his steps. There’s something  wrong about how beaten down he looks, how lost, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore, like the angels were all he had, and now he doesn’t, but... you have him back. You have Eridan back, not some bastardized, angelic version of him.

 

“Eridan…"

 

He looks up at you, tired, like all the energy’s been drained out of him, and you pull him back to your chest for a hug, your hands brushing over the bloody holes in his shirt where his wings once rested. 

 

“Eridan, it’s going to be alright,” you say, and when he clings to you, you don’t shake him off, you just kiss his cheek and run your hands through his hair, “It’s going to be alright.”

 

And it might take a while, it might take forever, but fuck, you would make it alright if it was the last fucking thing you ever did. 

 


End file.
